Built different: Is the 6XL, 464lb Desmond Watson too large for the NFL?

Spencer Rattler of the South Carolina Gamecocks is stiff armed by Desmond Watson during a game in 2022. Photograph: James Gilbert/Getty Images

Desmond Watson is pro football’s next very big thing: a 6ft 6in, 464lb defensive tackle who is poised to become the heaviest player ever selected at the NFL draft, which takes place later this month. “He’s a unicorn,” his coach at Florida, Billy Napier, said last month. “You’ll go the rest of your career, and you’ll never be around a guy that’s that stature.

A native of Plant City, Florida, the state’s strawberry capital, Watson was the Gators’ big man on campus, a larger-than-life folk hero to match the school’s 7ft 9in basketball prospect. When Watson arrived at college, he already weighed 440lb – or about as much as a standup piano. Watson’s legend grew once he cracked the team’s starting lineup the following year. During a 2022 game against South Carolina, Watson left 89,000 fans gasping after he split a double team and ripped the ball away from his opponent in a hit reminiscent of Jadeveon Clowney’s helmet-popping hit against Michigan in the 2013 Outback Bowl. (It’s a wonder Spencer Rattler, the Gamecocks’ 6ft 1in, 218lb quarterback, managed to tackle Watson to the ground afterwards.) At last year’s Gasperilla Bowl, Watson’s college swan song, the Gators handed the ball off to him to get a first down late in the game. “I can do it all,” he said afterward.

At Florida’s pro day, Watson showed NFL scouts the full range of that versatility and the extent to which it bends the rules of physics. Besides out-benchpressing every other draft prospect, Watson logged a 25in vertical and a 5.93-second time in the 40-yard dash – poor scores for most NFL hopefuls but impressive for someone of his size. The performance won Watson fans across the country and had analysts buzzing about his pro prospects like never before. The former Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad ‘Ochocinco’ Johnson told Watson he’d “look good in stripes” – but any team that’s appraising the Gators bulldozer will also have to think about his literal locker room fit. At Florida, he wore a size-6XL jersey along with custom-made pads and cleats. The only small thing on Watson was his number, 21 – digits that are usually reserved for skill position players. (He picked it to honor his younger brother, Dyson, who wore the number before suffering a life-altering stroke.)

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But the thing that really has Watson’s admirers excited is his potential to be just the immovable object to stand up to the NFL’s unstoppable force – the tush push. After a season that saw the Philadelphia Eagles call the “brotherly shove” time and again as they won the Super ...

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